How many companies do you know that use their own products? Not for beta testing, but for the tasks they are designed to carry out? This is exactly what SAP is doing, being both a developer and practitioner of its sustainability software that helps enable and empower companies to integrate sustainability into their operations.
Sustainability is an essential element of SAP’s purpose to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. Our approach is grounded in creating positive economic, social, and environmental impact, always within the limits of planetary boundaries and in full respect of human rights. With the ambition to drive sustainability beyond our net-zero 2030 goals and a portfolio that supports broader action areas such as holistic steering and reporting, ethical business conduct, and social responsibility, it was a natural progression for SAP to become its own customer.
As both an exemplar and enabler, we aim to make our targets and purpose a reality. At the same time, by testing our IT solutions to the limit, we share the lessons learned along the way with the product development teams to continuously improve the SAP Sustainability portfolio.
SAP shares its clients’ challenges
SAP faces many of the same sustainability challenges as our customers, such as data collection, data management, and compliance with regulatory requirements. Like the many organizations we support, SAP must manage huge volumes of sustainability data, including carbon footprints, material flows, and ESG metrics, working to ensure accuracy, consistency, and accessibility across the value chain. Demands on IT systems are high. They must grapple with collecting, integrating, and sharing data while also assuring quality, traceability, and auditability.
The evolving regulatory landscape represents another challenge, requiring SAP and other organizations to adapt and leverage their systems for compliance and reporting. IT solutions must be scaled and adjusted rapidly to these changing regulations and be able to collaborate seamlessly with supply chain partners.
Beyond these requirements, companies need sustainability data to provide actionable insights to support decision-making and respond to stakeholders. Meeting these challenges head-on requires an IT infrastructure that is innovative, scalable, and designed to evolve as the business advances on its sustainability journey.
“SAP runs SAP” implementation
In practice, SAP’s systems are designed to empower customers to measure, report, and act on their sustainability goals. To enable this, solutions are built into core business systems such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). This helps ensure a solid data foundation and flexible integration of data sets from various business areas such as procurement, finance, supply chain management, and product design. Sustainability-focused tools like SAP Sustainability Control Tower, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, and SAP Green Ledger can then provide the data, analytics, and insights needed to help drive sustainable decision-making.
“By implementing SAP Sustainability Control Tower and SAP Green Ledger across our reporting ecosystem, we aim to elevate sustainability management to the same standard as financial reporting,” said Dr. Christopher Sessar, Chief Accounting Officer, SAP SE. “These powerful tools will not only streamline and automate our ESG regulative compliance efforts but also generate actionable insights that drive strategic decision-making, accelerating our journey toward measurable sustainability outcomes and long-term environmental value creation.”
Implementation lessons
SAP’s approach has evolved since the first implementation of SAP Sustainability Control Tower in 2022. Early lessons included the need to collect emissions data in a consistent manner, anchor the project in its net-zero program governance, and expand the scope of the project beyond carbon footprint data to include other environmental topics for a more holistic approach.
The next question concerned the IT architecture, organized into three layers. The top layer relates to the collection of raw sustainability, financial, and operational data from various source systems. The middle management layer processes and standardizes the data. Finally, a bottom planning and reporting layer delivers insights for sustainability decision-making.
The rollout began by uploading carbon footprint data into SAP Sustainability Footprint Management across one company code and will increase to five company codes before the system goes live in Q3 of this year. It is useful to note the iterative approach our team has taken, which has allowed for the collection and integration of data from different sources and the testing of use cases including our ability to support businesses amid changes such as those recently initiated by the EU’s new Omnibus package.
Read in more detail about how SAP runs SAP Sustainability.
Matthias Medert is global head of Sustainability at SAP SE.
